E157: Epic legal win, OpenAI licensing deals, FCC targets Elon, Alex Jones reinstated & more

Key elements of Friedberg’s prediction were:

1. Google would likely win on appeal of the Epic v. Google Play Store antitrust verdict.
2. As a result, there would be no massive change to Play Store business practices or economics ("nothing burger").

What actually happened:

• Google did appeal, but on July 31, 2025 the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed the 2023 jury verdict and the permanent injunction, rejecting Google’s arguments and upholding findings that Google unlawfully maintained monopoly power in Android app distribution and in‑app billing. (cnbc.com)
• The district court’s October 7, 2024 injunction (three years, Nov 1, 2024–Nov 1, 2027) requires Google to:
  • Allow developers to steer users to alternative billing and distribution channels and provide links/info about them.
  • Stop conditioning benefits on Play Store exclusivity or preinstallation deals that crowd out rival stores.
  • Permit rival Android app stores to access the Play Store’s app catalog and to be distributed through the Play Store itself. These are major structural changes to how the Play Store operates. (caselaw.findlaw.com)
• On appeal, the Ninth Circuit specifically upheld this injunctive relief, confirming that these reforms were a valid remedy for Google’s antitrust violations. (law.justia.com)
• Google sought to pause or narrow the injunction, but the Ninth Circuit denied Google’s request for a stay pending further appeals, and set the injunction on course to take effect, with implementation deadlines into late 2025 (e.g., an October 29, 2025 deadline to open the store, allow alternative billing, and let developers set their own prices). (reuters.com)
• By late 2025, Epic announced that the Epic Games Store will be available within Google Play, and reporting describes the ruling as potentially reshaping the Android app ecosystem. (androidcentral.com)
• In November 2025, Epic and Google announced a proposed settlement under which Google would reduce its standard Play Store cut to around 9–20% and formally allow third‑party stores like Epic’s as recognized app stores on Android worldwide—changes significant enough that Judge Donato questioned whether the deal adequately addresses the jury’s liability findings. (en.wikipedia.org)

These outcomes directly contradict the prediction: Google did not win the key appeal, and the case has already driven—or is in the process of driving—substantial changes to both Play Store business practices (catalog sharing, rival stores within Play, alternative billing, anti‑steering, limits on exclusive deals) and economics (lower take rates in the proposed settlement). That is the opposite of a "nothing burger" with “no massive change.”

Therefore, the prediction is wrong.

The prediction requires that The Walt Disney Company itself launch a commercial, DALL·E/Stable‑Diffusion‑style image generator that lets users create customized images using Disney IP, e.g., “put yourself as a Star Wars character.”

What we actually see by November 30, 2025:

• There is no record in major news, trade press, or Disney communications of Disney launching any public generative image product that allows consumers to generate images of themselves or others as Star Wars/Marvel/Disney characters. My searches instead surface only unaffiliated “Disney-style” or “Star Wars-style” avatar tools provided by third parties, not by Disney. (nanoeditor.app)
• Disney’s public posture has gone in the opposite direction: the company has filed a landmark lawsuit against Midjourney precisely for enabling users to generate images of characters like Darth Vader, Elsa, and others without authorization, describing Midjourney as a copyright “free‑rider” and seeking to stop such uses. (cnbc.com) This makes it even less likely they have quietly launched their own open IP-generating tool for the public.
• Disney does use generative/AI techniques internally (e.g., high‑resolution face‑swap tech for VFX, and alleged AI‑generated Oogie Boogie Bash marketing art), but these are production tools and assets, not a consumer-facing, DALL·E‑like image product. (en.wikipedia.org)
• In late 2025, Bob Iger discussed future plans for Disney+ to let subscribers create AI‑generated videos and other short-form user content, via partnerships with generative‑AI providers. That feature is framed as upcoming video functionality on Disney+, not as a launched standalone text‑to‑image service, and the reporting does not specify an official “put yourself as a Star Wars character” image tool. (gamesradar.com)

Given (1) the absence of any credible evidence of a Disney‑run, DALL·E‑like image generator using Disney IP for public self‑insert avatars, and (2) nearly two years having passed since the December 2023 prediction, it has not come true.

Jason was reacting to the FCC’s decision in December 2023 to deny Starlink roughly $885–886M in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidies, which were intended to finance future rural build‑outs, not to pay for existing end‑user subscriptions. That ruling reaffirmed an earlier 2022 revocation of the provisional award. It did not cut off service to a cohort of current Starlink customers; it simply meant Starlink would not receive that public money to expand to 642,000 planned rural locations.(irepod.com)

Separately, the main U.S. household internet subsidy—the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—ended on June 1, 2024 after connecting over 23 million low‑income households.(congress.gov) However, multiple independent consumer and Starlink‑focused sources agree that Starlink either never meaningfully participated in ACP or was at most briefly/nominally listed and then removed; in practice, Starlink customers did not receive ACP discounts at scale.(highspeedinternet.com) That means there is no well‑documented, sizeable group of “rural customers whose government‑subsidized Starlink service was canceled” to study.

Where we do have data is for non‑Starlink ISPs: FCC surveys and independent analyses found that when ACP funding lapsed, roughly three‑quarters of participating low‑income households expected to change or drop their internet service rather than keep paying full price, and providers like Comcast in fact lost tens of thousands of ACP‑linked broadband customers when the subsidy ended.(route-fifty.com) Meanwhile, Starlink’s global subscriber count rose sharply from about 2.2 million in December 2023 to around 8 million by late 2025, with a large share of its base in rural areas, but those aggregate figures don’t tell us who subscribed or whether they were formerly government‑funded users.(en.wikipedia.org)

Because (1) the specific population Jason describes (rural users whose Starlink was canceled due to a U.S. subsidy program) is not clearly identifiable or sizable in the real data, and (2) we lack provider‑level evidence on what such users actually did afterward, his prediction about that group’s behavior cannot be directly evaluated from available information. Hence the outcome is ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University on January 2, 2024, less than seven months into her tenure and well within one year of the December 16, 2023 podcast episode.

Multiple outlets report that Gay stepped down on January 2, 2024, amid controversy over her congressional testimony on antisemitism and allegations of plagiarism, with Harvard’s provost Alan Garber becoming interim president.(cnbc.com) Her resignation letter confirms that she was “stepping down as president” and returning to the faculty.(theguardian.com)

Chamath’s prediction had two branches:

1. Short-term: She “probably won’t be in that job in a year from now.”
2. Medium-term: Alternatively, she would “muddle along” and in 2–3 years retire under a face‑saving narrative (e.g., to spend more time with family).

Reality matched the first branch: she did not remain in the job for even one year after the episode; instead she resigned within a few weeks. The exact framing of the resignation (institutional controversy rather than a bland “more time with family” narrative) corresponds to the second, alternative branch that did not occur, but that does not affect the correctness of the primary, time-bounded prediction.

Because Gay indeed left the presidency well before one year had elapsed, the prediction that she would not be in the job a year later was right.

Uber’s stock traded below $70 around mid‑December 2023 (e.g., closing at about $62 on December 15, 2023), so Chamath’s reference price of “around 70” is in the right neighborhood.(statmuse.com) Historical price data show that on April 5, 2024, Uber closed at roughly $77.16, clearly above the $76 level specified in the prediction and well within a few months of the December 16, 2023 recording.(marketwatch.com) Annual data for 2024 also record a year high of about $86.34, confirming that the stock traded comfortably above $76 during that year.(macrotrends.net) By late 2025, Uber’s share price remains in the mid‑$80s, further underscoring that the stock surpassed and stayed above the predicted threshold within the 1–2 year “market cycle” window.(macrotrends.net) Since the specific quantitative target (≥$76) was reached relatively quickly after the prediction and well within the implied horizon, this prediction is best judged as right.